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This year was another excellent year not just for bonsai but for all the gardens, floral displays and plants. It was great fun to explore the grounds and find such colourful and beautiful designs all around. Here are a few things that caught my eye.

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Another fantastic year for bonsai with a Gold medal for 2016 for the Federation of British Bonsai. With 22 bonsai trees from Swindon Bonsai Club and 5 accents out of the 25 bonsai trees on display.

Reginald Bolton and Terry Adams initially started helping on the FoBBs stand since 1996 and in 1998 they took over designing, building and managing the display and stand and have continued to do so for the past 18 years.

The trees are a range of species including Mountain maple, English Yew, White Pine, Trident Maple, Deshojo Maple, Chinese Juniper, Kiyohime Maple, Chinese Elm, Siberian Elm, English Elm, Korean Hornbeam, Ligustrum and a White Beech.

The build team for this year were Graham Simpson, Andy Jordan, Graham Stubbs, Terry Adams, Reginald Bolton and Tony Mckenzie and it was a great team effort. With a special vote of thanks to Graham Simpson who worked like a trojan to ensure the build was completed on time.

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If you are looking for a more natural approach to pest control why not try ladybirds as they are incredibly successful as a method of controlling aphid populations. You can buy the larvae online from Agralan Ltd. who are based here in sunny Swindon.

Tony Webber

Tony Webber, 22nd January 1941 – 26th March 2016

Sad news comes around far too often sometimes. Earlier this year bonsai lost Tony Webber, an instrumental and lively member of Phoenix Bonsai Group and Wessex Bonsai Society. He had a real passion and commitment for trees and will be badly missed.

His collection will be auctioned in Salisbury, Wiltshire on Sunday 3rd July. For an overview and all the additional details please see bonsaiauction.uk

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This week there was an exceptional seminar held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew entitled ‘Transformational Nature, unlocking the secrets of natural form, plant intelligence and the ageing process’. The Treework Seminar 21 is part of a series of seminars run by Neville Fay of Treework Environmental Practice and they are well worth attending. Tony Kirkham, Head of Arboretum at Kew gave the opening introduction and welcome to the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew and he also led a lunchtime talk around specific trees of note within the gardens including an amazing weeping Beech.

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